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Comment by amix | Hacker News Reader

Shouldn't this be a library that we can run on our own servers? I simply don't understand the recent influx of things that should be libraries.

I think building our infrastructure around free things that can be taken down at anytime is the wrong way to go. This "API services" should not be encouraged. Give us the source and let us run it on our own servers, let us modify it the way we see fit... This is what should be encouraged. "API library services" is just a lame way to get people locked down to a set of APIs that they have no control over.

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If you provide something as a service instead of an open source library, you can theoretically monetize it in the future (in a more direct fashion than the standard FOSS support contact) which makes it possible to use to generate VC interest, which is harder to do with a pure open source option. I'm fairly sure that's why it has become common to do this, though in pure practical terms I agree with you that this system isn't ideal.

Personally, I just ignore these services because virtually always the risk of building on them and having them suddenly disappear outside of your control far outweighs the time they save you in building your own thing.

I still believe building open source libraries, then building a paid service using those libraries is the best way to have your cake and eat it too. A fantastic example of this is Shopify and ActiveMerchant.

Shopify is not open source. ActiveMerchant benefits Shopify by being open source because it allows third parties to write payment modules which can be folded into Shopify. Since Shopify's main competitors are written on php, asp and other non-ruby languages this amounts to a competitive advantage.

It's not about proving library-like functionality. It's about providing infrastructure that their customers don't have to build and maintain.

Managing avatars has non-obvious challenges/headaches: - uploading images, downloading from services, and processing images to the right size should happen asynchronously. That's not easy in every web framework, and even when it's easy, it's mean you have to manage that infrastructure. - you might want to periodically update your avatars from Facebook/Twitter in case your users change theirs - sometimes you may have to retry downloading avatars from Facebook/Twitter

This is the point of all "cloud" services. Some people think "I can run Linux on my own machine, I don't Amazon EC2", and that's fine, but obviously there is a need for services that provide or hide infrastructure. Some companies, like startups for instance, are willing to accept the risks that external dependencies have to attain the benefits of not having to manage the infrastructure.

Good point. And it's not just availability, it's privacy and security too. When a service like that becomes popular, it can easily be used by tracking people online. It can also be a lucrative target for attacks, since the impact will affect many websites at once.

I couldn't disagree more. As an overworked startup founder who regularly uses services like this, SAAS has been a godsend. I hate configuring libraries, especially stuff like this that needs write access to a filesystem, database, etc. Just host it for me and I'm a happy camper.

(The only thing I generally require is that I be able to do something sane for testing locally without internet access. I don't care what it is as long as it enables me to minimally test.)

Yes, it should. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4107459

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